Can't the NAA think up a new campaign

If you've been perusing the ad trade sites lately, which I have, you may have seen that the Newspaper Association of America is running its ad campaign again, touting newspaper as "the multi-medium" and linking to this site, full of facts and figures that, we can only assume, assure the reader that newspapers, in fact, rock. The good news is that the campaign considers a newspaper to be not just the paper it's printed on, but the entire product, including digital. The bad news is that with newspaper armageddon all around, it would be reasonable to launch a campaign that everyone hadn't already seen before, and this campaign is at least a year old. My first response to seeing it was, "Oh, that campaign again" and then I realized that the newspaper has to find something new to say. I assume the data you get at the click-through is updated from last time the NAA ran this campaign, but most of us don't have the time or inclination to find out.

CNN wants you on its live page

Found this ad linking to CNN's live stream of election coverage at The New York Post's site, of all places. Now, that's bi-partisan.

Emphatically not into Enfatico ad

You pretty much never see an agency buy an online display ad to promote itself, and that's not a good thing. In fact, the first time I've ever seen this done came today, from Enfatico, the new all-Dell agency created by WPP, and to me it seems crazily off strategy. (I found it on the Adweek home page.) The ad, at left, would seem to exist to attract clients, and yet, the agency's first, and probably only, priority in the near-term is to concentrate on Dell. Maybe the ad was meant to recruit talent, but all it does is link to the Enfatico home page. Why does this exist? Branding? Why do you need to brand when you're Dell's house agency?

Rachel Ray, coffee-loving terrorist ... right

Was just reading this whole ridiculous story about Dunkin' Donuts having to pull an online ad featuring Rachel Ray because it appears as though Ray is wearing a keffiyeh, which, I'll admit, I hadn't remembered was the name of the scarves that look similar to the one she is wearing. Now some poor stylist has had the worst day of his or her career, people are probably yammering on somewhere about whether Ray secretly supports terrorists, and Dunkin' Donuts has its own PR problem--though hopefully minor--to nicely coincide with the equally dumb scandal over the breasts in the Starbucks logo. Silly.

The online component of that VW campaign

So, in case you missed it, VW is also running banners asking people to vote on what the people want as part of its new campaign. The current vote is about whether people want only one spouse or not, and, as of right now—despite intensive recent promotion about the joys of polygamy aside—the people want only one spouse. They have also voted "yes" to a long list which includes the following: "a colony on Mars," "the coyote to catch the roadrunner" and "political candidates to take lie detector tests." The supposed link here is that VW also gives people what they want, but coming from an old-school VW Beetle with a strong German accent, all I can think of is, well, Hitler—who wasn't exactly a man of the people. Maybe I think that way because my husband was a German major.

Microsoft trading in silly Irish stereotypes

As if St. Patrick's Day isn't tacky enough, Microsoft had to do this incredibly cheesy ad featuring a leprechaun as computer virus. Before he turned this appealing green color , he was red. Saw it in both the print and online versions of The New York Post.

Is the up online ad market ending?

Over at Silicon Alley Insider, they're on online ad market death watch, reading numerous tea leaves and coming away with the conclusion that, based on the subprime mortgage collapse and other factors, the industry is in for a downturn. The latest signal is an announcement by online ad network Burst Media, which said early today that a couple of key clients have cancelled expected campaigns due to budget constraints. It then goes onto say, solemnly, "The 2000 ad crash began exactly this way: anecdotal reports of weakness from minor players that were dismissed as 'isolated' and 'company specific'." The part of this line of thinking I'm buying is that the financial services sector is bound to pull back on the dancing aliens it uses to sell exotic mortgages. However, the current online ad market differs from 2000 in some extremely substantial ways. By the time of the dot-com bust in the first half of 2000, the market was overhyped in a way it isn't now—advertisers were pouring money into the medium even though they had scant evidence that it was working. They also hadn't yet gotten religion about the fact that consumers, were, in fact, changing their media habits. This time around, clients realize that for all its warts, this is ultimately the most accountable medium that has ever existed, and with new, digitally-driven consumer media habits clearly entrenched, even if a downturn in ad spending happens, it's doubtful that advertisers will retrench by putting money allocated for online into other media. It will be the other way around. I should also point out that the posts I talked about above are written by Henry Blodget, who has a very personal incentive to get calling a downturn in the online ad market right.

Yahoo ad sales defections continue

The defection of members of the Yahoo advertising group took a double-dip today: both Jerry Shereshewsky, who had perhaps the world's oddest title (Ambassador Plenipotentiary to Madison Avenue) and Steve Mitgang, who most recently held the title, senior vp, advertising platforms and products, are both taking CEO posts elsewhere in the Internet universe. As was Wenda Harris Millard, who recently left for Martha Stewart Omnimedia, Jerry, was truly the public face of Yahoo, at least in the advertising industry. It was pretty hard to attend an Internet advertising event over the last five years or so, and not see Jerry there. He's taking the helm at grandparents.com—an idea whose time has come—where he'll no doubt continue in that role. As for Mitgang, he was deeply involved with Project Panama—Yahoo's revamp of its search advertising platform, and he'll be taking the reins at Veoh, one of the emerging players in the Internet video industry. (Dmitry Shapiro, the passionate founder of Veoh, CEO will continue on as chief innovation officer.) To get back to the Yahoo angle, it's hardly a shock to see Shereshewsky leaving. In a sense, Yahoo is going back to the future, trading in Terry Semel for Jerry Yang, who founded the company and, its relationships with advertisers and agencies having been solidified, focusing more on the tech-heavy side of online advertising. As for Mitgang, it's a little tougher to see, since the overriding goal of the ad revenue side of Yahoo's business is to wed search with display, and search seems to be the coin of the realm in Santa Clara these days. On the other hand, I'm just someone sitting in her home office trying to read a few tea leaves.